Thank M for the Daniel Craig years. The past few films, no matter how hit or miss, have restored a franchise to the glory after a few short movies ago, it had reached…well, maybe not its lowest low, but certainly its then-ruination.

The 007 series spans 23 movies, nearly 48 hours of screentime and presumably enough illegitimate love-children to field a baseball team. But like everything that runs for such a long time there’s bound to be the occasionally dip in quality (see: Diamonds Are Forever, Never Say Never Again and essentially everything Roger Moore ever did). Die Another Day was the absolute nadir of the modern Bond movies. The films had always been stupid and camp but this film caused the series” aggregated BS to reach critical mass and collapse in on itself, in a stinky implosion, essentially destroying the entire Bond universe and necessitating a reboot to the franchise. Die Another Day‘s invisible car is essentially the 007 version of the nipples from the Joel Shumacher Batman movies.

Before I start, I feel that I need to point out that the terribleness of this movie was in no way Pierce Brosnan’s fault. He did the best he could with what he was given, unfortunately he was given a turd.

Brosnan gets a bad rap because he was unlucky enough to come along at a stage in the series where producer Barbara Broccoli was just greenlighting whatever BS passed her desk (including possibly this terrible idea for 007: Never Say Rehab) but make no mistake, Brosnan is Bond and, more importantly, he is my generation’s Bond.

I love what Daniel Craig did with the character in Casino Royale, he’s a far more credible action star, but he can’t match Brosnan when it comes to the smirks, quips and heroic amounts of boning that make up the other part of the character. I firmly believe that, apart from his holiness Connery, there was no-one better at epitomising the idea of a super-spy who saves the world with his penis.

Unfortunately, he was saddled with this, a film that tries so hard to destroy James Bond that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was written by S.P.E.C.T.R.E.